Women's Body in the Images in School Textbooks after the Revolution: Representation and Politics

The education system in Iran has taken a male-patterned and gender-based approach to up bring its desired and ideal man. Based on dominant masculine discourse, the education system aims to hegemonize this discourse of womanhood through the school curriculum and one of the main specifications of it is women’s body. We have based our discussion on Foacault's research methodology, the concept of Representation of Stuart Hall, and the Discourse Theory of Laclau and Mouffe and various feminist theories to discuss the relations between the political discourses and representation of women's body in school textbooks after the revolution. We seek to uncover the ideological-political representation of womanhood and women's body in the images of school textbooks that we think is masculine.According to the findings of this article, the representation of women’s body uses a different discriminating ‘visibility’ system in images in school textbooks. This discrimination shows itself in different levels and layers, including representing the only acceptable type of sexual system in the society, mainly heterosexuals, and ignoring or excluding ‘other uncommon’ types of sexual tendencies from the images as well as the uncommon types of attire that one may choose to use differently from the acceptable and official one.